Our Girly Girl

It started a couple months ago. Jane began to really appreciate dresses. Then, a few weeks ago, she started to request them often. This week, however, was a turning point. Each morning I would go to greet her at her crib and her first word was always, "Dress" followed by "off" (referring to her pajamas). After the dress was on she would usually request "Pigtails." Somedays I could convince her to go curly by putting a clip in her hair, but other days she insisted on "Pretty pigtails." Next word: "Mirror." But let's get back to the dresses. Not just any dress would suffice. Oh no. Cotton jersey knit? Forget it. Put those casual play dresses away! Jane needs "pretty" dresses. When going to the playground, to the store, or in the jogging stroller, I would BEG Jane to wear a more casual dress. I would point out the colors, the flowers, and try my best to convince her of their "pretty" factor, but she would have nothing to do with it. (There is always one exception though with the yellow dress you will see in the pictures. She likes that casual dress for some reason). Today I woke up and found that Matt had put her in a Sunday dress, the type that is stored in the closet, not her drawers, so that she can't get them out and insist on wearing them. I asked, "Why did you put her in that?" His reply, "Because it's the only dress I could find that would make her stop bawling." (Jane isn't very happy when she opens her dress drawer only to find a couple cotton T-shirt knit dresses). Miraculously Matt was able to later convince her to put on shorts! She excitedly ran around for about 5 minutes pointing at everyone's shorts. "Mommy shorts. Daddy shorts. Jane shorts." Then came "Off. Dress." This time I convinced her to wear the yellow cotton dress (thank you Costco). And off we went for a shopping spree at D.I. (a thrift store for all of you that don't know the Utah lingo). Matt asked, "You want to bring a camera for this?" I thought, "Trust me, this is going to be sweet."

Jane has no idea the dress wonderland that awaits her:


Jane looks at the first dress:


And then it began. She ran to Daddy yelling "Off, off."


Dad was busy taking pictures and laughing so she ran to Mommy.


I was hoping to make it the dressing room but she would have none of it.


It was too big so we had to try another:



Then she found another...and another.


She is in heaven!



I finally got her into the dressing room before our camera battery died. Need I say, she loved it?


In the end we managed to get 6 dresses for $11. Eleven dollars is a small price to pay for battle-free mornings.